Strangers (81 page)

He slipped the car in gear again. He drove out of Evanston.

He decided not to return to the rectory to pack. There was no time. He would head straight to O’Hare International Airport and take the first available seat on the first available flight west.

Dear God, he thought, what have You sent us? Is it the greatest gift for which we could have asked? Or a plague to make all Biblical plagues pale by comparison?

Father Stefan Wycazik put the pedal to the metal and drove south and then west toward O’Hare like…well, like a bat out of Hell.

•

Ginger and Faye spent the larger part of the morning with Elroy and Nancy Jamison under the pretense that Ginger, supposedly the daughter
of an old friend of Faye’s, was moving west for unspecified health reasons and was interested in learning about Elko County. The Jamisons were local-history buffs, eager to talk about the county, especially about the beauty of the Lemoille Valley.

Actually, indirectly and directly, Ginger and Faye were seeking indications that Elroy and Nancy were suffering from the effects of collapsing memory blocks. They found none. The Jamisons were happy, untroubled. Their brainwashing had been as successful as Faye’s; their false memories were firmly rooted. Bringing them into the Tranquility family would put them in jeopardy while serving no great purpose.

In the motel van, as they pulled away from the Jamison house (with Elroy and Nancy waving from the front porch), Ginger said, “Good people. Really nice people.”

“Yes,” Faye said. “Reliable. Wish they were standing beside us in this thing. On the other hand, I’m happy they’re well out of it.”

Both women were quiet then, and Ginger figured Faye’s thoughts were the same as her own: They were wondering if the government car was still parked along the county road, near the entrance to the Jamisons’ place, and if the men in it would still be content merely to follow them. Ernie and Dom had armed themselves for their expedition into the mountains around Thunder Hill Depository. However, considering the unprovocative nature of Faye’s and Ginger’s errands, no one had thought that they might be in special danger, too. Ginger, like many attractive women living alone in a city, knew how to use a handgun, and Faye, a good Marine wife, was something of an expert, but their knowledge and expertise was of no use when they were not armed.

Having driven only a quarter-mile along the Jamisons’ half-mile driveway, Faye stopped the van in one of the deepest pools of shadows cast by the overhanging piñons. “I’m probably being melodramatic,” she said. She slipped open a few buttons on her coat and reached under her sweater. “And these won’t be much good if they point guns at our heads.” Grimacing, she withdrew two steak knives and put them on the seat between her and Ginger.

Surprised, Ginger said, “Where’d you get these?”

“This is why I insisted on drying the breakfast dishes while Nancy washed them. Putting away the silverware, I swiped these. Didn’t want to ask straight-out for a weapon; that would’ve meant bringing Nancy and Elroy into it, which it was clear we weren’t going to have to do. I can return them later, when this is over.” She picked up one of the knives. “The end’s nicely pointed. The blade’s sharp and serrated. Like I said, not much help if they’ve got a gun at your head. But if they were to run us off
the road and try to force us into their car, you keep the knife a secret until you get your opening, then stab the bastard.”

“Got it,” Ginger said. She grinned and shook her head. “Someday, I hope you’ll get a chance to meet Rita Hannaby.”

“Your friend in Boston.”

“Yes. You and Rita are a lot alike, I think.”

“Me and a high-society lady?” Faye said doubtfully. “Can’t imagine what we’d have in common.”

“Well, for one thing, you both have such equanimity, such serenity, regardless of what’s happening.”

Putting the knife back on the seat, Faye said, “When you’re a service wife, you either learn to go with the flow, or you go crazy.”

“And both you and Rita look so feminine, soft and dependent on the outside—but inside, each of you is, in your own way, tough as nails.”

Faye smiled. “Honey, you got a bit of that yourself.”

They drove the last quarter-mile of the piñon-shaded driveway, out of the shadows and into the midday gloom of the pending storm.

The brown-green, stripped-down government car was still parked along the county road. Two men were in it. They looked impassively at Ginger. Impulsively, she waved at them. They did not wave back.

Faye drove down toward the floor of the Lemoille Valley.

The car followed.

•

Miles Bennell slumped in the big chair behind his gray metal desk and looked bored, and Miles Bennell ambled around his office while answering questions in a tone of voice that was sometimes indifferent and sometimes amusedly ironic, but Miles Bennell never fidgeted, groveled, looked frightened, or became angry, as almost any other man would have done in the same situation.

Colonel Leland Falkirk hated him.

Sitting at a scarred table in one corner of the room, Leland worked slowly through a stack of personnel files, one for each of the civilian scientists who were conducting studies and experiments in the cavern with the immense wooden doors, where the secret of July 6 was contained. He was hoping to narrow the field of possible traitors by determining which men and women could have been in New York City during the time the two notes and Polaroid snapshots had been mailed to Dominick Corvaisis in Laguna Beach. He had told Thunder Hill’s military security staff to do this work on Sunday, and they professed to have completed the inquiries and to have found nothing to pinpoint the leak. But in light
of the screw-ups in their investigation thus far—including
two
sabotaged lie detectors—he no longer trusted them any more than he trusted Bennell or the other scientists. He had to do it himself.

But right away Leland ran into problems. For one thing, during the past eighteen months, two damn many civilians had been brought into the conspiracy. Thirty-seven men and women, representing a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines, had possessed both high-security clearances and specialized knowledge essential to the research program Bennell had devised. Thirty-eight civilians, counting Bennell. It was a miracle that thirty-eight eggheads, utterly lacking in military discipline, could have kept any secret so long, let alone this one.

Worse, only Bennell and seven others were engaged in the research full-time, to the exclusion of all other professional pursuits and to the extent that they actually lived in Thunder Hill. The other thirty had families and university positions they could not leave for long periods of time, so they came and went as their schedules permitted, sometimes staying a few days, maybe a few weeks, rarely as long as a few months. Therefore, it would be a long and arduous job to investigate each and determine if and when he—or she—had been in New York.

Worse still, of the eight members of the full-time investigatory team, three had been in New York in December, including Dr. Miles Bennell himself. In short, the list of suspects currently numbered at least thirty-three among the scientific research staff alone.

Leland was also suspicious of the entire Depository security staff, though Major Fugata and Lieutenant Helms, the head of security and his right-hand man, were supposedly the only security personnel who knew what was happening in the forbidden cavern. On Sunday, soon after Fugata began questioning the full-time research staff and those part-time researchers currently in residence, he discovered that the polygraph was damaged and could not produce reliable results. Yesterday, when a new machine was sent up from Shenkfield, it also proved defective. Fugata said that the second machine was already damaged when it arrived from Shenkfield, but that was bullshit.

Someone involved in the project had seen reports that the witnesses’ memory blocks were breaking down. Deciding to exploit that opportunity, he egged some of them along with cryptic notes and Polaroids stolen from the files. The bastard had nearly gotten away with it, and now that the heat was coming down on him, he had sabotaged the lie detectors.

Pausing in his perusal of the personnel files, Leland looked at Miles Bennell, who was standing in the small window. “Doctor, give me the benefit of your insight into the scientific mind.”

Turning away from the window, Bennell said, “Certainly, Colonel.”

“Everyone working with you knows about the classified CISG report that was done seven years ago. They know the terrible consequences that might result if we went public with our discoveries. So why would any of them be so irresponsible as to undermine project security?”

Dr. Bennell assumed a tone of earnest helpfulness, but Leland heard the acid-sharp disdain beneath the surface: “Some disagree with CISG’s conclusions. Some think going public with these discoveries wouldn’t result in a catastrophe, that the CISG was fundamentally wrong, too elitist in its viewpoint.”

“Well, I believe the CISG was correct. And you, Lieutenant Horner?”

Horner was sitting near the door. “I agree with you, Colonel. If the news is broken to the public, they’ll have to be prepared slowly, over maybe ten years. And even then…”

Leland nodded. To Bennell, he said, “I have a low but realistic opinion of my fellow men, Doctor, and I know how poorly most would cope with the new world that would follow the release of these discoveries. Chaos. Political and social upheaval. Just like the CISG report said.”

Bennell shrugged. “You’re entitled to your view.” But his tone said:
Even if your view is ignorant and arrogant and narrow-minded.

Leaning forward in his chair, Leland said, “How about you, Doctor? Do you believe the CISG was right?”

Evasively, Bennell said, “I’m not your man, Colonel. I didn’t send those notes and Polaroids to Corvaisis and the Blocks.”

“Okay, Doctor, then will you support my effort to have everyone in the project interrogated with the assistance of drugs? Even if we get the polygraph fixed, the answers we obtain will be less reliable than those we’d get with sodium pentothal and certain other substances.”

Bennell frowned. “Well, there are some who’d object strenuously. These are people of superior intellect, Colonel. Intellectual life is their
primary
life, and they won’t risk subjecting themselves to drugs that might, as a side-effect, have even the slightest permanent detrimental effect on their mental function.”

“These drugs don’t have that effect. They’re safe.”

“They’re safe
most
of the time, maybe. But some of my people will have moral objections to using drugs for
any
reason—even safe drugs, even for a worthwhile purpose.”

“Doctor, I’m going to push for drug-assisted interrogation of everyone in Thunder Hill, those who know the secret and those who don’t. I’m going to demand General Alvarado approve.” Alvarado was commanding officer of the Thunder Hill Depository, a pencil-pushing desk-jockey who had spent his career on his backside. Leland liked Alvarado no more
than he liked Bennell. “If the general approves drug-assisted interrogation, and if any of your people then refuse, I’ll come down hard on them, hard enough to break them. That includes you, if you refuse. You understand me?”

“Oh, perfectly,” Bennell said, still unruffled.

Disgusted, the colonel pushed the remaining personnel files aside. “This is too damn slow. I need the traitor quickly, not a month from now. We’d better repair the polygraph.” He started to get up, then sat down as if he’d just thought of what he was about to ask, though it had been on his mind since he entered the Depository. “Doctor, what do
you
think of this development with Cronin and Corvaisis? These miraculous cures, the other bizarre phenomena. What do you make of it?”

Finally Bennell showed strong, genuine emotion. He unfolded his hands from behind his head and leaned forward in his chair. “I’m sure it scares the hell out of you, Colonel. But there could be another, less cataclysmic explanation than the one on which you’ve fixated. Fear is
your
only reaction, while I think it might be the greatest moment in the history of the human race. But whatever the case—we’ve absolutely got to talk with Cronin and Corvaisis. Tell them everything and seek their cooperation to discover exactly how they obtained these wonderful powers. We can’t simply eliminate them or put them through another memory-wipe without knowing all the answers.”

“If we bring everyone at the Tranquility into this, tell them the secret, and then don’t wipe their memories again, the cover-up can’t be maintained.”

“Possibly not,” Bennell said. “And if that’s the case…then the public will just have to be told. Damn it, Colonel, because of these recent developments, studying Cronin and Corvaisis takes precedence over
everything
else, including the cover-up. Not only studying them…but letting them have a chance to develop whatever strange talents they may have. In fact, when will you take them into custody?”

“This afternoon, at the latest.”

“Then we can expect you to bring them to us sometime tonight?”

“Yes.” Leland rose from his chair again. He picked up his coat and walked to the office door, where Lieutenant Horner was waiting. He paused. “Doctor, how will you know if Cronin and Corvaisis are changed or not? You think there’s no real chance of…possession. But if you’re wrong, if they’re not entirely human anymore, and if they don’t want you to know the truth, how would you possibly discover it? Obviously, they could defeat a lie detector or any truth serums we have.”

“That’s a puzzler, all right.” Miles Bennell stood up, jammed his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, and began to pace energetically.
“My God, it’s a real challenge, isn’t it? We’ve been working on the problem ever since we learned about their new powers from you on Sunday. We’ve been through ups and downs, despair, but now we think we can deal with it. We’ve devised medical tests, psychological tests, some tricky damn stuff, and we think that all of it taken together will accurately determine whether or not they’re infected, whether or not they’re…human anymore. I think your fears are utterly unfounded. We thought infection…
possession
was a danger at first, but it’s been more than a year since we learned we were wrong. I think they can be entirely human and still have these powers.
Are
entirely human.”